1. Technical Field
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to techniques for controlling electro-optical elements, such as organic light-emitting diodes.
2. Related Art
Electro-optical devices including an arrangement of a plurality of electro-optical elements are used for various applications, such as exposure devices of electrophotographic image forming apparatuses or display devices of various electronic apparatuses. For this type of electro-optical device, techniques for correcting characteristic errors (differences from design values or variations among the elements) of the electro-optical elements or active elements for driving the electro-optical elements have been proposed. For example, JP-A-8-39862 (FIG. 6) discloses, as shown in FIG. 14, a technique for supplying a drive current I, which is the sum of a predetermined drive current Ia and a correction current Ib according to a correction value of each light-emitting element, to the light-emitting element over a time length T according to a tone level specified to the light-emitting element.
Since the correction current Ib in the above structure is a current for correcting a small characteristic error of each light-emitting element or active element, the current value of the correction current Ib is significantly smaller than that of the drive current Ia. In general, a circuit that can generate such a small current with high precision and implement correction over a wide range is difficult to realize. If such a circuit is realized, the size of the circuit becomes large.